Recognizing that the world can no longer afford war, the foreign
policy of this administration will be crafted to build cooperation among
people and nations in order to eliminate terrorism and its underlying
causes, resolve conflicts through peaceful diplomacy, roll back military
spending and demilitarize the economies of all nations, restore
environmental health, and increase economic stability.

We will work to replace a global system of economic competition with a
global system of economic cooperation based on the sharing of
beneficial technology and the right of the people of each nation to own
and control their own economic resources to meet their needs for food,
energy, shelter, education, health care, and other basics. We will work
to protect the rights and health of working people and the environment
everywhere.

To that end, I will do all in my power to correct the legal travesty
perpetrated against democracy by the Supreme Court decision in Citizens
United. I will put my administration behind a Constitutional amendment
to make clear that Constitutional protections apply only to real people,
not to corporations. And I will appoint only judges who understand the
difference between people and corporations.

Any corporation that is too
big to fail is too big to exist.

The only reason for a government to grant a corporate charter is to
serve a well-defined public purpose under strict rules of public
accountability. Therefore, I am appointing a commission to recommend
legislation to require that each corporation’s public purpose is
specified in its charter and is subject to periodic public review.

Through a public legal process, we will work with state governments
to withdraw the charter from, and force the dissolution of, any
corporation that consistently fails to obey the law and fulfill a
legitimate public purpose.

There will be no no-strings government bailouts of failed banks or
other corporations during my administration. Any corporation that is too
big to fail is too big to exist. We will break up excessive
concentrations of economic power and restore market discipline through
vigorous antitrust enforcement and create economic incentives for
oversized corporations to break themselves up into their component
units.

With specific regard to Wall Street, there is no place in a
life-serving twenty-first-century economy for financial speculation,
predatory lending, or institutions that exist primarily to engage in
these illegitimate practices.

We will act to render Wall Street’s casino-like operations
unprofitable. We will impose a speculation tax, require responsible
capital ratios, tax capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income,
and impose a significant penalty surcharge on short-term capital gains
from speculative trading. We will make it illegal for people and
corporations to sell or insure assets that they do not own or in which
they do not have a direct material interest. We will prohibit financial
institutions from trading for their own accounts in securities they sell
to the public.

To meet the financial needs of the new twenty-first-century Main
Street economy, we will reverse the process of mergers and acquisitions
that created the current concentration of banking power in Wall Street
institutions delinked from national and community interests and
accountability. We will restore the previous system of federally
regulated locally owned and managed community banks that fulfill the
classic textbook banking function of financial intermediation between
local people looking to secure a modest interest return on their savings
and local people who need a loan to buy a home or finance a business.
We will favor banks organized as nonprofit cooperatives, or owned by a
nonprofit or a state or local government.

We will recommit ourselves to the founding ideals of this great
nation, focus on our possibilities, and liberate ourselves from failed
economic ideologies and institutions.

I have instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to take immediate
action to assume control of the Federal Reserve and restructure it to
function as an independent, but publicly transparent, federal agency
accountable to the president and the Congress. The new federalized
Federal Reserve will have a mandate to stabilize the money supply,
contain housing and stock market bubbles, discourage speculation, and
assure the availability of credit on fair and affordable terms to
eligible Main Street borrowers.

I am asking Congress to create a Federal Recovery and Reconstruction
Bank. Henceforth, all new money created by the Federal Reserve will be
directed to this newly created bank in the form of interest free
nonrecourse bonds to finance green infrastructure projects as designated
by Congress.

We will recommit ourselves to the founding ideals of this great
nation, focus on our possibilities, and liberate ourselves from failed
economic ideologies and institutions. Together we can create a stronger,
better nation and world to secure a fulfilling life for every person
and honor the premise of our Declaration of Independence that every
individual is endowed with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.

(I hereby extend to President Obama or any future American president
permission to deliver all or any portion of this address as his own
without need for attribution.)